Chris Lombardi puts defense and security under the spotlight, as he shares his takes on recent NATO and EU cooperation and provides insight into the company’s own long-term strategic partnerships in Europe.

Three trends are currently driving the global electricity sector: decarbonization, decentralization and differentiation. Utilities are making significant contributions to mitigate carbon emissions, while a technology revolution is …

Moscow is demanding that the EU introduce a common certificate for all animal products from the 25 member states and earlier this month imposed a week-long import ban on all meat, fish and milk products.

The Commission maintains that it is “legally impossible” for it to issue a common certificate, pointing out that veterinary certificates are the responsibility of each national administration.

The EU agreed on a deadline of 30 September to resolve the issue. “Russia is not asking anything abnormal,” the country’s EU spokesman Dmitriy Polyanskiy said. The Commission had been informed long before that, as of 1 June, the old system would not be acceptable to Russian authorities, he explained.

“We are asking for a safeguard mechanism, one [centralized] body in the EU, that would guarantee that no components in the exported goods are infected,” he said, arguing that within the EU with its open internal borders no such guarantees existed.

The Commission insists on national certificates because it is national inspectors, working to EU norms, who see that exporters fulfil the Union’s standards. “Otherwise [if the Commission was to start signing these certificates], we would need a thousand more people,” a Commission spokesman said, adding that the EU was prepared to agree to similar national certificates in national languages, signed by national veterinary inspectors, but with some common criteria.

The EU and Russia were “very far apart”, he said, noting that the atmosphere had been more positive during the last talks of 23-24 June in Moscow.

The EU last year exported to Russia agriculture products (animal products plus cereal) worth €4.1 billion, one tenth of all EU exports to Russia. Among the countries concerned are the Baltic states that export mainly fish products, while meat from Ireland, Germany, Denmark, France and Spain accounts for up to a quarter of Russia’s meat market. The Russian authorities have until September to complete inspections of companies that are exporting to Russia from the ten new member states. Until 1 May, these countries had bilateral agreements with Moscow.